big."

The passion of tears lay just below the quiet voice all unbetrayed.
Somehow she kept them back.

There was a pause, and then he added:

"I find it more and more so every day." His voice passed through the
lamp-lit room like a murmur of the wind in branches. The look of youth
and happiness she had caught upon his face out there had wholly gone,
and an expression of weariness was in its place, as of a man distressed
vaguely at finding himself in uncongenial surroundings where he is
slightly ill at ease. It was the house he hated--coming back to rooms
and walls and furniture. The ceilings and closed windows confined him.
Yet, in it, no suggestion that he found _her_ irksome. Her presence
seemed of no account at all; indeed, he hardly noticed her. For whole
long periods he lost her, did not know that she was there. He had no
need of her. He lived alone. Each lived alone.

The outward signs by which she recognized that the awful battle was
against her and the terms of surrender accepted were pathetic. She put
the medicine-chest away upon the shelf; she gave the orders for his
pocket-luncheon before he asked; she went to bed alone and early,
leaving the front door unlocked, with milk and bread and butter in the
hall beside the lamp--all concessions that she felt impelled to make.
Fore more and more, unless the weather was too violent, he went out
after dinner even, staying for hours in the woods. But she never slept
until she heard the front door close below, and knew soon afterwards his
careful step come creeping up the stairs and into the room so softly.
Until she heard his regular deep breathing close beside her, she lay